Apollonius of Perga

Apollonius of Perga fl. 247-205 BC, Greek mathematician of the Alexandrian school. He produced a treatise on conic sections that included, as well as his own work, much of the work of his predecessors, among whom was Euclid. Apollonius introduced the terms parabola, hyperbola, and ellipse. In his works Greek mathematics reached its culmination.

Apollonius of Perga (c.262–c.190 bc) Greek mathematician and astronomer. He built on the foundations laid by Euclid. In Conics, he showed that an ellipse, a parabola, and a hyperbola can be obtained by taking plane sections at different angles through a cone. In astronomy, he described the motion of the planets in terms of epicycles, which remained the basis of the system used until the time of Copernicus.

Apolloniusof Perga (c.262–c.190bc)Greekmathematician, born in modern Turkey. He showed that the ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola are all curves formed by a plane intersecting a cone in different ways, i.e. that they are conic sections. The orbital path of an unperturbed body moving in a gravitational field follows one of these three curves, as would come to be appreciated by later astronomers such as E.Halley, who translated Apollonius' book Conics. Apollonius also originated the mathematical concept of motion based on epicycles and deferents, later taken up by Hipparchus and Ptolemy to explain planetary motion.